Mass Tort Marketing (The Ultimate Guide)
There is ample opportunity to recruit mass tort clients if your firm has an effective marketing strategy. However, some firms fail by targeting the wrong clients or not offering sufficient incentives for victims to reach out and file a claim. Additionally, some mass tort practices resort to crude scare tactics instead of delivering high-quality content that draws the trust of potential clients.
- Updated: March 21, 2023
Quick Links
- What’s the difference between marketing for mass tort cases and general law firm marketing?
- What are the first steps you should take to market for mass tort clients?
- Identify your law firm’s brand
- Optimize your website
- Practice areas in mass tort cases:
- Choosing Your Practice Area
- Determine Your Ideal Client
- Decide If You Want a Digital Marketing Campaign, Traditional Marketing Campaign, or Both
- Digital Marketing Campaigns:
- Traditional Marketing Campaigns:
- Set Your Goals
- Marketing Strategies for Mass Tort Cases
- Digital Marketing Campaigns
- Traditional Marketing
- Content Marketing
- Advantages of Content Marketing
- Disadvantages of Content Marketing
- Should I use a lead generation company?
- Advantages of Lead Generation Companies
- Disadvantages of Lead Generation Companies
- What should I look for when outsourcing mass tort marketing services?
Law firms highly desire mass tort litigation because it can be very profitable, and more personal injury firms are adding mass tort cases to their portfolio. According to the National Trial Lawyers Organization, mass tort cases made up over 36% of the federal civil docket in 2017.
Marketing in the legal profession can be difficult. According to the American Bar Association, there are 1.3 million lawyers in the U.S. Therefore, competition is exceptionally high, and law firms must be aggressive in their marketing efforts to prove their value among competitors and reach qualified leads that may be skeptical of their services.
The best practices to reach potential leads necessitate investing more time, money, and resources. This article provides approaches and recommendations to effectively and ethically market for mass tort cases.
What’s the difference between marketing for mass tort casesand general law firm marketing?
For individual cases, such as personal injury cases, law firm marketing tends to be vague because each case can differ drastically, involving various injuries, circumstances, at-fault parties, etc. However, in mass tort cases, victims have similar circumstances, suffer from common injuries, and share culprits. Therefore, mass tort marketing can be highly specific to address those widespread concerns. For example, it can reference specific companies at fault and particular injuries rather than using vague marketing language to capture as many leads as possible, which is common in traditional marketing.
Recruiting clients for mass tort cases may be problematic, as they might wrongfully believe they would need to share any compensation awarded with a larger group, therefore opting for individual representation. While this is the case in class action lawsuits, it’s not the same with tort cases. Thus, to successfully recruit clients for mass tort cases, law firms may need to make a concerted effort to educate clients on the benefits of mass tort litigation as part of their marketing strategy.
Recruiting clients for mass tort cases may be problematic, as they might wrongfully believe they would need to share any compensation awarded with a larger group, therefore opting for individual representation. While this is the case in class action lawsuits, it’s not the same with tort cases. Thus, to successfully recruit clients for mass tort cases, law firms may need to make a concerted effort to educate clients on the benefits of mass tort litigation as part of their marketing strategy.
What are the first steps you should take to market for mass tort clients?
Proper preparation is essential for a successful marketing campaign, and taking these initial steps can set you up for long-term success:
Educate yourself on the issue
When the public starts becoming aware that a product or service is dangerous and is causing serious harm or death to consumers, you must research and educate yourself on the issue. Stay one step ahead of the litigation.
Identify your ideal clientele
To do so, you can create several profiles of the ideal client for every service you provide. Each client profile should consist of client demographic information, their goals and motivations, and their difficulties and pain points.
After you’ve educated yourself on the issue and you’ve identified your ideal clientele, aim to be the first or among the first law firms to break the story to the public and launch your ad campaigns as soon as possible and be ahead of the competition.
After these initial preparatory steps, consider the following essential strategies:
After these initial preparatory steps, consider the following essential strategies:
Identify your law firm’s brand
Ask yourself the following questions:
- How do we want people to view our firm?
- What kind of expertise do we have on which we can capitalize?
- How do we convey trust, value, and quality?
- What voice, style and image do we want to convey, and how can we do so effectively?
Optimize your website
After curating your brand, create a comprehensive description of your law firm’s appeal to share with your marketing team.
Include an “About Us” section that captures your brand and mission and elaborates on what sets you apart from the competition. An effective website focuses on practice areas, success stories and client testimonials, a blog, case studies, and FAQs. You should specifically highlight your expertise and success in litigating mass tort cases. Your website should rank well in search engines, making legal SEO marketing campaigns crucial for success.
Choosing Your Practice Area
For individual cases, such as personal injury cases, law firm marketing tends to be vague because each case can differ drastically, involving various injuries, circumstances, at-fault parties, etc. However, in mass tort cases, victims have similar circumstances, suffer from common injuries, and share culprits. Therefore, mass tort marketing can be highly specific to address those widespread concerns. For example, it can reference specific companies at fault and particular injuries rather than using vague marketing language to capture as many leads as possible, which is common in traditional marketing.
Recruiting clients for mass tort cases may be problematic, as they might wrongfully believe they would need to share any compensation awarded with a larger group, therefore opting for individual representation. While this is the case in class action lawsuits, it’s not the same with tort cases. Thus, to successfully recruit clients for mass tort cases, law firms may need to make a concerted effort to educate clients on the benefits of mass tort litigation as part of their marketing strategy.
Recruiting clients for mass tort cases may be problematic, as they might wrongfully believe they would need to share any compensation awarded with a larger group, therefore opting for individual representation. While this is the case in class action lawsuits, it’s not the same with tort cases. Thus, to successfully recruit clients for mass tort cases, law firms may need to make a concerted effort to educate clients on the benefits of mass tort litigation as part of their marketing strategy.
Practice areas in mass tort cases:
Pharmaceuticals
Consumer products
Pharmaceuticals
Consumer products
Catastrophic personal injury
Sexual abuse and assault
Medical devices, products & implants
Catastrophic personal injury
Sexual abuse and assault
Medical devices, products & implants
Determine Your Ideal Client
Identifying your ideal clientele will steer your marketing strategy. To get started, build several profiles of your ideal clientele for every practice area and service you provide. A client profile should include client demographic information, their goals and motivations, and their difficulties and pain points.
For example, suppose you’re recruiting child sex abuse clients against the Boys Scouts of America. In that case, your client profile could be males between a certain age (calculate the age range by researching when BSA started, how old the victims would be today and the current minimum age of children who join BSA today) who have suffered physically, emotionally, or financially from the abuse they experienced.
After identifying your ideal clientele, you can develop an internal marketing funnel to better analyze client behavior to help turn your website visitors into clients. A marketing funnel is an inbound process that captures a client’s journey from finding your firm to hiring you as their attorney and includes three phases:
For example, suppose you’re recruiting child sex abuse clients against the Boys Scouts of America. In that case, your client profile could be males between a certain age (calculate the age range by researching when BSA started, how old the victims would be today and the current minimum age of children who join BSA today) who have suffered physically, emotionally, or financially from the abuse they experienced.
After identifying your ideal clientele, you can develop an internal marketing funnel to better analyze client behavior to help turn your website visitors into clients. A marketing funnel is an inbound process that captures a client’s journey from finding your firm to hiring you as their attorney and includes three phases:
Awareness
When the prospect realizes they have a problem in the mass tort space and begin researching to understand their situation better. Potential client problems can relate to defective products, product liability cases, claims against pharmaceutical companies, or other potential claims.
Consideration
When the client starts to define their problem and searches for solutions
Decision
When the client begins researching attorneys to help with their problem
Taking the time to build a client profile proactively can help you generate quality leads on an ongoing basis. This long-term strategy can save you the time and resources you may otherwise waste creating multiple ad-hoc client recruitment campaigns that may attract a lower quality of clients.
Decide If You Want a Digital Marketing Campaign, Traditional Marketing Campaign, or Both
There are many digital and traditional marketing campaigns that you can employ, but your client profile should help dictate your choice. You can and should use both forms of marketing to expand your reach after careful consideration of your target clientele.
For example, suppose your target clientele is millennials. In that case, you might focus most of your marketing efforts on social media but still air television or radio ads during peak hours or programs popular with millennials. There’s no one-size-fits-all approach to marketing. It’s dynamic and based on factors included in your client profile such as age, occupation, schedule, hobbies, etc.
Forms of digital and traditional marketing include:
Digital Marketing Campaigns:
- Websites
- SEO
- Paid Search (Google Ads)
- Legal blogs and directories
- Social media (e.g., Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, etc.)
- Email campaigns
- Any use of digital platforms
Traditional Marketing Campaigns:
- Billboards
- Newspapers
- Magazines
- Radio
- Word of mouth
Set Your Goals
Defining your goals and setting up metrics to measure those goals is critical in the early stages of establishing an effective marketing strategy. Doing so includes:
Identifying your metrics
The seven most common metrics are:
- Consumption Metrics: How much prospective clients interact with your content (i.e., website visits, clicks on shared links, emails opened, downloads, etc.)
- Sharing Metrics: Quantity and frequency of your content shared
- Engagement Metrics: How much time users spend engaging in your content (i.e., time spent reading, number of sessions, comments, and likes)
- Retention Metrics: How many users subscribed or unsubscribed, followed or unfollowed, and returned to your content
- Lead Metrics: How many leads have been generated (i.e., form submissions, phone calls, emails, etc.). You can use this information to determine cost-per-lead, which is the cost spent acquiring a lead compared to the number of leads generated.
- Sales Metrics: How many new clients you’ve signed as a result of all your marketing efforts. Comparing the total number of clients signed to your entire marketing costs will determine your cost-per-client.
- Cost Goals: Comparing each marketing piece’s production, distribution, and promotion costs compared to the cost of your entire marketing strategy
Determining measurement tools
Determine which software you will use to measure the metrics mentioned above, such as website analytics, social media management platforms, email marketing software, or all-in-one software that tracks metrics from different platforms, including HubSpot or Marketo, which are popular among law firms.
You can use the results from your measuring tools to conduct a SWOT (strength, weakness, opportunity, threat) analysis of your marketing plan. You should implement strategies to re-evaluate, pivot, and optimize your marketing efforts accordingly.
You can use the results from your measuring tools to conduct a SWOT (strength, weakness, opportunity, threat) analysis of your marketing plan. You should implement strategies to re-evaluate, pivot, and optimize your marketing efforts accordingly.
Marketing Strategies for Mass Tort Cases
After creating your client profiles and devising a marketing plan, you’re ready to put the plan into action. Marketing and client intake are synergistic. Marketing campaigns aim to ultimately collect prospective client contact information to include in your database. Otherwise, your marketing efforts are not as effective as they should be. An effective marketing strategy puts your firm on a client’s radar, informing them of your firm’s competence and instilling confidence in your ability to help them solve their problem, which in turn generates leads.
Digital Marketing Campaigns:
Digital marketing is a highly effective form of marketing that casts a wide net to reach prospective clients from different geographic areas.
Digital ads should always redirect the user to your website, specifically to the portion that relates to their query. For example, if a user clicks on your ad about a recalled drug, the link should direct them to the part of your website about pharmaceutical lawsuits.
Digital ads should always redirect the user to your website, specifically to the portion that relates to their query. For example, if a user clicks on your ad about a recalled drug, the link should direct them to the part of your website about pharmaceutical lawsuits.
Costs
Ads
SEO
Costs
Your marketing budget should factor in the varying costs of the different forms of digital ads and which ones are the most effective and appropriate. You should consider:
- Pay per click ads: Ads that you pay for when people click on them
- Cost per lead: The cost spent acquiring a lead compared to the number of leads generated determines how cost-effective your marketing strategy is
- Cost per action: An ad that you only pay for when the user takes a specific agreed-upon action, allowing you to control your advertising costs to align with your marketing end goals. For example, you may only pay the advertiser if a user signs up for your newsletter or submits a query form.
Ads
Social media advertising is a powerful advertising strategy to reach millions of social media users via the following platforms:
- Social networking (e.g., Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter)
- Photo/Video sharing (e.g., Instagram, YouTube, Facebook Live, Snapchat, Pinterest, Vimeo)
- Microblogging (e.g., Twitter, Tumblr)
- Google ads: Pay-per-click ads seen at the top of your Google search and displayed on websites that are not search engines
- Display network: Background ads unrelated to a user’s activity
- Search ads: Ads placed on web pages based on results from a user’s search
SEO
Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of improving the quality and quantity of website traffic from search engines. It makes your website more search-friendly to help you rank higher in search engine results.
SEO factors in your ideal client profile and your firm’s areas of practice to promote your services to clients who are likely to need your legal services and are more likely to take action.
SEO factors in your ideal client profile and your firm’s areas of practice to promote your services to clients who are likely to need your legal services and are more likely to take action.
Traditional Marketing
Traditional marketing can be more effective for demographics that have limited access to the internet and digital marketing. Traditional marketing reaches your audience through:
TV commercials
TV is considered one of the most effective media outlets for personal injury ads, sometimes reaching clients before getting on the internet, especially hospitalized victims. TV ads are popular as they are often heavily produced, catchy (including music or jingles), and evoke emotional responses.
Radio commercials
Radio is compelling because it captures a broad demographic of all ages with ads that are catchy and dynamic, repetitive, and create a sense of urgency.
Billboards
These are effective because they are visible to commuters and use concise messaging and powerful imagery to convey a specific tone or emotion.
Newspapers
Often, specific demographics subscribe to newspapers, making them ideal advertising sources for certain clientele.
Content Marketing
Content marketing focuses on the creation, publication, and distribution of media content targeted to a specific online audience via:
- Articles and blog posts
- Social media posts
- Videos
- Emails
- Newsletters
- Webinars
- Infographics
Advantages of Content Marketing
Content marketing can be advantageous in the following ways:
- It can be more cost-effective than traditional marketing.
- Creating quality content increases user engagement, thereby increasing your website traffic.
- Quality educational content makes a good impression on users and increases your company’s trustworthiness and reputation.
- It optimizes your SEO by showing search engines that your website is active.
Disadvantages of Content Marketing
Content marketing is not without disadvantages, including:
- Delivering high-quality content consistently is time-consuming.
- It requires consistency. Once you’ve built momentum and an audience base, failing to provide the same quality content can lead to user disengagement.
- It requires creativity and skills. Your content must compete with the copious amount of content available online. It must be engaging and creative, including blog writing, web design, video editing, and other skills.
- It requires variety. Coming up with versatile and relevant topics continually can be challenging.
- It can be difficult to establish metrics to measure results from your content marketing.
Should I use a lead generation company?
Lead generation companies are a third-party company that helps organizations generate leads for their products and services from new clients not in their existing pipeline. Lead generation companies can help with a business’s advertising and growth, but outsourcing services can be a gamble.
Advantages of Lead Generation Companies
There are many advantages to working with a lead generation company, including:
- They have staff with expertise in SEO, graphic design, analytics, social media strategy, branding, copy-writing, and other areas that your firm may be lacking in.
- You don’t have to spend time making cold calls.
- They can boost your online visibility.
- They can help reduce “closing time” or the period from when a client shows interest to the moment they sign on as a client.
- They can provide marketing automation software or help optimize your existing software.
- They can help you stay current on market trends that may otherwise exhaust many of your resources.
Disadvantages of Lead Generation Companies
Working with a lead generation company has disadvantages, too, including:
- You’ll have limited control and visibility over the source of leads. You may not know or be able to verify if leads are ethically sourced, which can be particularly concerning for a law firm.
- Hiring a third-party company increases your marketing budget.
- Return on Investment (ROI) can be low. The company may not deliver a satisfactory number or quality of leads.
- They are not as familiar with the law, your firm, or your services. Therefore, the methods and tone that the company employs to generate leads may not appeal to prospective clients.
What should I look for when outsourcing mass tort marketing services?
Choosing to outsource your services is a gamble that requires a lot of trust in the outsourcing company, so it’s paramount you do your due diligence when searching for the right company to do business with. You should look for companies with proven track records of working with law firms successfully. You also want a company that’s savvy in all the marketing strategies discussed in this article.
Verify that the company has actual people vetting leads rather than auto-generated leads of sub-par quality. Also, make sure to have an efficient, streamlined process that allows you to call leads within five minutes of receiving them or have a system in place to remind you to follow up multiple times if you cannot reach them the first time.
If you don’t have a call center and you’re outsourcing that service, ensure that the company has accurate reporting tools for inbound calls received to help you determine if your marketing campaign is working or if there are issues with an intake that need addressing.
Verify that the company has actual people vetting leads rather than auto-generated leads of sub-par quality. Also, make sure to have an efficient, streamlined process that allows you to call leads within five minutes of receiving them or have a system in place to remind you to follow up multiple times if you cannot reach them the first time.
If you don’t have a call center and you’re outsourcing that service, ensure that the company has accurate reporting tools for inbound calls received to help you determine if your marketing campaign is working or if there are issues with an intake that need addressing.
You should look for the following qualities in an outsourcing company:
- They have effective and timely communication skills.
- They understand your brand, your ideal clients, and your goals.
- They are proven to go beyond the lead to help you improve your signing rate.
- They use current tracking and analytics software.
- They have a simple retainer process.
Once your firm has successfully generated leads and signed on cases, employing the right case management company can assist you in the plethora of administrative tasks associated with mass tort cases. These tasks can range from managing client relationships, developing cases with medical record reviews, and preparing client case files for settlement positioning.
